‘Canicule,Won’t Cool’

I find weather talk boring at the best of times, but the constant repetition of the phrase, ‘Bloody Hell, it’s hot’ is surely one of the most irritating facets of a heatwave. Yes, it’s hot, we get it, stop pointing it out. They’re the kind of people who make a cup of tea and burn their lips on an over-ambitious first gulp, ‘Oh, that’s hot!’ Of course it is, YOU JUST BOILED THE WATER!
Of course my slightly irritable mood might be down to the fact that it is so bloody hot. The difficulty with being a mod is that the rules are never relaxed, the temperature doesn’t hit 90 degrees and we all go wearing cut off jeans and muscle t-shirts, the rules still apply as anyone who saw me almost literally turn into a pool of water while wearing a mohair suit in Bangkok once will testify. The last canicule (heatwave), in 2003, was reportedly responsible for 70,000 deaths across Europe, mainly old people and Goths, so I’m aware of the repercussions but anyway, the point is, tempers are short, energy needs to be conserved, no extra duties taken on. Keep your head down and get through it. Minimum effort spent.
“What do you mean we’re having a barbeque for twenty one people on Saturday evening?!” I asked Natalie with genuine exasperation.
We are already a week into the Grandes Vacances and already knackered, and taking on a big social responsibility like this just seemed to be the stuff of madness, plus a lot of the invitees would be kids from Samuel’s theatre group, it would be like being on a day course with TGI Friday staff. If it’s too hot for Natalie to be cleaning up poo from the horses’ field once a day, then surely it’s way beyond the reasonable temperature to outdoor cook for twenty odd French people?
I went off to sulk somewhere cooler than in the fiercely hot front room, and also to secretly do my ‘To Do BBQ List’ and also a ‘To Do BBQ List – Appendix 1 – Shopping List’ list. The beauty of the weather being like this at the moment is that it’s very quiet. For most of the day the boys are languishing inside, as are Natalie and the dogs, the cats and so on. The horses and goats are trying not to get in each other’s way in the stable and even the hens are clucking less. In fact, they’re doing everything less. Since the canicule began we have had very few eggs, actually even from a couple of weeks before, and it’s now becoming an issue.
I love my hens, I love their fussiness and their shrill admonition if I stumble in upon them unannounced like a lost bloke who’s wandered into the M&S bra-fitting department, but if they’re not producing any eggs then they’re just yet another drain on resources. It all seems to be Monica’s fault, again showing the curse of all hens named after songs by The Kinks. She is brooding again and therefore refusing to leave the nest area of the coop. Naturally this tends to put the others off laying and production has, it seems, all but dried up. We have searched everywhere else but apart from the odd stray we haven’t found where they are now laying, if they are laying at all. The chicken man in the market was convinced that they will have found somewhere else but other people, French people I must add, have laughed that off and said simply that the hens are French hens and are therefore on strike. I have now separated Monica, put her in solitary if you will, but this has yet to make any difference and so the last course of action, before introducing new blood that is, is to – and I quote a chicken farmer here – ‘dunk her silly arse in cold water.’
It’s all very distressing but it means that if we hear one of the hens giving off at any point, it used to mean that they’d just laid, we go running after them to see if they’ve added to a secret stash somewhere. They normally haven’t but it’s just about the only sound around here at the moment, apart from exploding beer bottles that is. It’s become something of a regular practice to put small bottles of green beer, my favourite is ‘33’, in the freezer for a brief spell rather than have dozens of them taking up space in the fridge at any one time. That’s all very well and a good idea on paper until after about four or five of the Moorish little sods I completely forget that they’re in the freezer at all until one of them explodes. It’s now as regular as a cannon salute, I’ll sit down somewhere for a few minutes and then hear a subdued blast as another forgotten beer erupts in frozen frustration.
It’s got to the point that if I buy a small crate of 24 bottles I’ll actually only drink about 15 of them and so it was with good caution that Natalie reminded me that I had in fact put a whole crate in the freezer just before the barbeque guests arrived. It was a great evening though, the meat was done well, rather than well done, especially the ribs with a sticky plum and rhubarb chutney coating. The kids all played in the pool, I made strides with dinner table, conversation French which is like ‘Speed Language’ and I met some of Natalie’s friends who I hadn’t had the chance to meet before as I’d been working. It was also a chance to say thanks to those who’d rallied around her when she’d been ill a couple of weeks ago when, again, I was away.
It was very late by the time everyone had gone and the boys were in bed and Natalie and I sat on the still baking terrace in the dark and silence, happy with ourselves and our lot generally.
“I love it when it’s like this,” I said, closing my eyes and putting my head back, “so peaceful and quiet.” And I put my arm around Natalie as she put her head on my shoulder. “So calm.”

There was a large, muffled explosion as 24 beer bottles exploded in the freezer but neither of us moved, it was just too bloody hot.

The A la Mod, published by Summersdale, and all about the early years is available HERE 
and in all good bookshops. Thank you.